Changing intensity of control

Every manager must – besides other activities – exercise control over his or her subordinates, no matter if it happens through a direct supervision or through indirect control based on reports or statistics. Performing this managerial function is called controlling in Anglo-American literature. This paper does not understand the concept of managing accounting under the term controlling (German meaning). Controlling is a constantly ongoing managerial process of designing standards, measuring performance, comparing the performance with standards, and implementing corrective actions to ensure effective and efficient running of the organization's activities. However, a manager often becomes also an object of control by himself or herself. Based on results of our questionnaire survey in 331 companies operating in Slovakia, which collected data at the turn of 2016 and 2017, we analyze to what extent managers had to increase their control efforts and to what extent they were exposed to more control from another subject of control in the past year. We analyze the research results according to the different characteristics of our research sample, such as the size of the company by number of employees, the economic result, the respondent's position in the organizational structure of the company, or the respondent's attitude if he/she is an object or subject of control. Due to the quantitative and qualitative results, we also provide reasons for the increase in intensity.